


Veritas Omnia Vincent

by half_alive



Series: Respice, Adspice, Prospice [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Football, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Family Dynamics, Grief/Mourning, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Secret Relationship, Sports
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28373763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_alive/pseuds/half_alive
Summary: Leonard Snart has always been good at compartmentalizing. Between his relationship with his long-term boyfriend Barry, playing quarterback for the Central City Cougars, and remaining firmly in the closet, even to his own family, he’s needed to be.But it’s lonely playing different roles for different people, and Len is beginning to lose the strength it takes to keep those parts of his life separate. As things begin to collide, it becomes a matter of choosing one life over another. And Len has never been less sure of what he wants.Can be read as a stand-alone.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart, Leonard Snart & Lisa Snart, Mick Rory & Leonard Snart
Series: Respice, Adspice, Prospice [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1352221
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you're coming here without having read the first in the series, fear not! Though its events are important to this story, they're referenced enough that you should be able to get the gist of what you missed.

They had the funeral on a Thursday. The sun shone all morning, trickling through the trees and basking everything in a warm glow. She would’ve adored it, ever the nature-lover. It was the kind of day she would’ve taken to sit out on the patio with a good book and a cup of Lisa’s lemonade. The garden would’ve been full of life all around her, the bees buzzing through her beloved chrysanthemums and the leaves stretching up to feed off the sunlight. In one of those floral sundresses she loved so much on warm summer days, she’d have asked him out to join her, tapping the cushion beside her with that soft, charming smile that was impossible to refuse.

“ _ Sweetheart _ ,” she’d have said. “ _ You look tired, and it’s such a beautiful day. Come sit with me. _ ”

Len wished for rain. His suit was hot and itchy on the back of his neck, the black fabric absorbing all the heat. He felt suffocated, pulling his tie looser and looser every hour. It seemed to go on forever. The pastor spoke in a soft, but optimistic tone about heaven and angels and how he was certain she was watching over them all. 

He wished for thunder as they lowered her body into the grave. They’d chosen a simple casket, ivory white with gold details. It was as pristine as the day they’d picked it out, the sun lending it an iridescence that hadn’t been there in the yellow light of the funeral home.

He wished for mud as they threw their flowers down after her. He’d picked his from the garden. Chrysanthemums, the deep violet ones. Her favourite. They looked beautiful against the white, with the blue delphiniums Lisa had chosen. They’d planted them together, the three of them. Three weeks after they’d moved in, when she was trying to find ways to connect with these two strangers under her care.  _ Happiness, love, positivity _ . She’d been so patient and kind, so invested in the meaning of each seed they buried in the earth.

Finally, once their guests had left and it was just him and Lisa and their father, he stared at the freshly filled grave and wished that the day she’d died had been this beautiful.

“I’m going to take Lisa home,” his father told him, resting his hand on his shoulder. His voice was thick from crying, but Len hadn’t seen him shed a tear. “Stay as long as you want, but I was thinking we could all make dinner together. From one of her recipes.”

Len nodded without looking at him. He felt the kiss Lisa planted on his cheek, shaky as it was, and the firm grip of her arms around him before she left, too. When he was certain that enough time had passed for them to reach the car, he turned his head up to the sun.

Her last days, it had rained. In the hospital bed, withering away more and more with each hour that passed, all she’d seen was the rain hammering the windows. The dark, dreary sky, lit only by the occasional flash of lightning. He’d wondered, sitting at her bedside with his heart in his throat, if that was the universe’s way of reflecting the grief they felt. If the sky was grieving her too, the sun unable to shine without her light.

It felt stupid, now. If anything, the sky was mocking them. Withholding this brilliant, perfect day for when she was no longer here to enjoy it.

He breathed deeply, the fresh summer air filling his lungs. He felt for his phone in his pocket, but the dread that filled him at the thought of how many condolences there’d be in his messages made him take his hand away. Instead, he crouched down to touch the petals of the bouquet they’d chosen to lay at her grave. Daisies. Sunflowers. The simple, common flowers her friends had always thought beneath their own gardens. She’d loved them. They’d had a special spot at the front of the house, where the white and yellow petals stretched tall along the walk up to the door.

_ New beginnings _ , she’d said as he’d helped her lay the fertilizer for the daisies.  _ Just like us _ .

Here they were, beginning anew, this time without her.

Len ran a trembling hand down his face, willing the tears away. If his father had managed not to cry in front of her, so would he. He took a breath, then another, until the grief that was choking him settled just a little deeper. Then he gathered himself and left her.

.

Lisa chose chicken waterzooi for dinner — a thick, winter soup whose recipe their grandparents had brought over with them from Belgium. They’d hated it as kids merely for the vegetable contents, but their mother had kept making it throughout the years until they’d learned to love it. On the coldest days when the tips of their noses turned red after just a minute outside, she’d light the fireplace and serve them a hot bowl of it with some of the leftover bread she baked on Sundays.

The heat outside was stifling, but it was the coldest day they’d ever had. They had only the store bought bread Len had brought over with the groceries he’d gotten them earlier that week, and there was no wood to light the fireplace, but Lisa and he cut the vegetables together while their father went searching for the chicken broth. It took him half an hour to find where she had kept it.

“Thank you,” he’d told them when they were seated at the dining table with steaming bowls of soup in front of them. He must’ve felt the emptiness of her seat as deeply as they did, the wicker chair beside him, right in front of Len. “For being here.”

Lisa reached across the table to grab their father’s hand, her long nails stripped of polish. “Of course,” she consoled. “We wouldn’t be anywhere else.” He smiled back, however half-hearted, and then turned to look at Len. Len tried to make his face into something that matched Lisa’s earnesty, pulling his own gaze from the empty chair.

“If there was any time for us to be together,” Len offered, “it would be now.”

His dad seemed to appreciate the sentiment. He ran his thumb along Lisa’s hand, nodded firmly at his son, then went back to eating his soup. None of them acknowledged the mistiness of his eyes, or the way he kept clearing his throat. Crying had always been weakness to him, though he’d tried his best not to impart that on his children. They let him have this.

All through dinner, Len felt his phone like a weight in his pocket. He’d spent his energy holding the weight of his grief, and he had none left for others’ expectations. What was he supposed to say? How many empty thank you’s would he need to give?

Still, as Lisa cleared the table and his dad went to heat the pie their neighbour had dropped off, he knew there was someone he needed to talk to. Someone who was at home, probably in the living room with the dog, aching only because he was aching, waiting to hear that he had survived the worst of it.

“Are you staying the night?” his father asked, setting a plate of cherry pie in front of him. He sounded hopeful, but unexpectant.

Guilt coiled in Len’s stomach. His dad needed him. Lisa needed him. And yet still they expected nothing from him, because that was what he’d been giving them the last few years. Coming over for dinner never more than once a month, never staying the weekend like Lisa did. He wanted to be here, now, when it mattered.

But he needed Barry. He needed those familiar arms around him, that silent companionship if he cried himself to sleep and those gentle fingers tracing his arms if he didn’t. He needed Flash, their dog, to greet him at the door, tail wagging and always excited to see him, no matter how bad the day had been. He needed his toothbrush, and the chamomile tea Barry bought under the guise of it being his favourite, when they both knew Len was the only one who drank it, and then only when he was upset.

“Yeah,” he told his dad, offering a weak, empathetic smile. “I’ll stay.”

His dad smiled back, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He grasped his shoulder again, their version of a hug, and rounded the table back to his seat. It was only once he’d sat down that his face seemed to crumple, blank shock overtaking his expression. Len and his sister exchanged looks as he ran a hand down his face, visibly fighting off tears. “We forgot to say grace.”

Lisa immediately leaned forward to grasp his hand again, urging Len to do the same with a pointed look. “It’s okay, Dad,” she assured him. “We’ll do it now.”

“I don’t—” he looked across the table at them. Len had never seen his father so lost. “Your mother always—”

“It’s  _ okay _ ,” Lisa repeated. “I’ll do it.”

As she grasped their hands and blessed their food, it was one of a few rare times where Len didn’t feel suffocated by the words he’d heard nearly every night of his childhood. He watched his father choke back his tears, the tension leaving his shoulders, and listened to his sister’s strong, unwavering voice. Love, all encompassing, coated the grief in a buoyant layer, lifting the weight the best it could.

He vividly remembered Lisa’s high school years, when he’d come home from college to her dyed hair and heavy make-up and dinner would inevitably begin with a shouting match between her and Dad over why she should have to say grace when she didn’t believe in ‘ _all_ _that bullshit_ ’. Len and his mother were the peace-keepers to Lisa and his father’s quick tempers, and so he would settle his sister back in her seat with a hand on her arm and a pleading, “Lisa, can we not fight on the one night I come home to visit?”. Their mother would give her husband a sympathetic, _I can’t believe our daughter, either_ , look and grab his and Len’s hand to start grace herself. In an instant, everything would be right again.

That night, Len and Lisa stayed up well after their father had gone to bed, standing around the kitchen island with mugs of hot cocoa. Lisa had tried to recreate what Mom used to make them all the time, but it had turned out too bitter from too much cocoa. To save it, Len had emptied the last of the stale marshmallows into each of their cups.

“I’m going to stay with Dad for a while,” she told him, resting her cup on the marble counter. “So you don’t need to worry. You can go home.”

_ To Barry _ , she didn’t say, though they both knew she meant it.

He stirred the marshmallows around in his cup, little white ants melted by the heat. “Thanks, Lise.”

They stood in the silence for a while longer, nothing but the buzz of the fridge and the chirping of the cicadas through the screen door. 

“Len,” she said, in that careful tone that meant she knew it would hurt him to say it. “When are you going to tell him?”

Len watched the little white ants dance in their field of mud. The last time she’d asked, it’d ended in him throwing down a hundred dollar bill to cover the cheque and storming out of the restaurant. Now, he didn’t have the energy to be angry at the world.

‘ _ Never _ ’ was his usual response when she asked, but this time all he could do was sigh. “I don’t know, Lise. What about your classes?”

He could feel her pursing her lips, wanting to say more but, like him, not having the energy to fight. Instead, she took his subject change for the peace offering it was and scraped her fake nail along the twisting design their mother had painted on their mugs. “I was thinking I’d take the semester off.”

Len looked at her. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Long. Her natural colour, as it’d been since she’d aged out of the vibrant bathroom dye jobs. She’d taken out her helix piercings since he’d last seen her, and she’d long since traded gauges for simple, elegant hoops.

She looked as tired as he felt, as they all were. The bags under her eyes had been there for weeks, though she’d dressed them up with makeup for every hospital visit. Had she lost weight? He couldn’t tell if it was just the way she disappeared into her sweater.

_ Don’t _ , he wanted to say. It was the over-protective brother in him who had always wanted too much control of her life. The same person who had yelled at her for an hour until she’d called her first boyfriend sobbing to break up with him, who’d refused to let her walk by herself even just to neighbours until he’d moved out, and who’d told her not to go to fashion school because it wasn’t a viable career choice, no matter how much she loved it.

It was also the brother who’d read her to sleep until she was twelve, despite their father’s protests that it was  _ his _ job, who’d been the only one in their family to cry at her high school graduation, and who’d picked up the phone, no matter the hour, for every angry, teary-eyed phonecall where she’d rant about their parents and how they were so much worse with him gone.

_ Don’t _ , he wanted to say. It was the tiny part of him that thought about college and remembered some of the worst months of his life. He’d sat beside a hospital then, too, and prayed for the first time in years that nothing would be taken from him.

He’d almost told them, then. He remembered going home for his mother’s birthday a few weeks after it happened. He’d done his best to stay neutral, if not happy, and fight off the nervous ticks that always gave him away when he was upset. But he couldn’t stop himself from twisting the rings on his hands, from wiping down the counter before he set his plate on it, and his parents had known that something wasn’t right.

He’d been so close. His mom had asked him if he was alright, late at night after Lisa and his father had gone to bed and they were sitting in the living room, basking in the warmth of the fireplace. She’d made him hot cocoa, perfect as it always was. He’d been a breath away from telling her.

But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d said he was worried he was failing a class, and she’d believed it, because she always believed him no matter the lie he was telling.

And now she was gone, still believing every one of Len’s lies, taken from him no matter how hard or how often he’d prayed.

He wondered what she would say if she saw them now. She would take Lisa’s hand, he thought, and tuck her long hair behind her ear, and tell her to do whatever she felt was right. She would probably say that life had plenty of time to take a pause when you needed it, and that always what was most important was showing up for the people you loved.

“Okay,” he told his sister instead of any of that. Lisa looked him over, waiting for his judgement, but he’d turned to watch the moths attack the porchlights.

They finished their cocoa in silence and, when they were done, Len dried the mugs she washed. She hugged him something fierce when they went up to bed.

“I love you,” she told him, vehement and clasping both his shoulders to keep him right there with her.

He kissed her cheek. “I love you, too.”

Later, when night had given way to the first grey clouds and purple skies of dawn, he crept upstairs from the bed they’d made up on the couch. He cracked the door to her room open just enough to peer inside, where she was tucked away under the mountain of blankets in the guest bed. He closed the door, leaning back against it. He shut his eyes, twisting the ring on his finger.

One, two, three times. A pause. One, two, three more, until he could make his way downstairs again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been holding onto this since I posted the final chapter of its prequel, so I thought it was time to throw it out there despite the remaining chapters still being works in progress, especially because this is one of my personal favourites from the series. Updates will likely be slow, but I wanted to give something to anyone who's been waiting for this since finishing Vos Liberabit. I hope it was a good read and that you'll stick around for more <3


	2. Chapter 2

Len didn’t leave his dad’s until late the next day. He’d felt too guilty, watching his father wander aimlessly around the house everytime he needed something, unable to remember where it was. Lisa started giving Len looks after lunchtime, pointedly angling her head at the door. She must’ve seen the way he’d pushed his food around his plate until nothing was touching.

So here he was, pulling up the driveway to his own house, the sun just a bit lower in the sky than when he’d left. He could see the lights on in the foyer through its glass walls, but he was greeted by silence as he hooked his keys on the rack. Flash’s leash wasn’t hanging beside it and Barry’s beloved but threadbare sneakers were missing from the shoe rack.

It gave him time to wash his hands, and then the counter after whatever cooking adventure Barry had gone on that morning. He washed his coffee mug, too, tracing the Central City University crest. There were two chips along the rim, but Barry refused to let him throw it out.

When he was done in the kitchen, Len checked their room to make sure the bed was made. It was, at least as well as Barry had ever managed, so he went to the living room to turn on the sports channel. Golf, probably his least favourite, but still he’d take it over whatever home renovations and teen dramas were playing on the other channels.

He was so focused on the frustratingly slow zoom-in the ball on its tee, he didn’t hear Barry come in until he had a lap full of excitable golden retriever. “Fuck, Flash,” Len laughed, trying to hold him still long enough to scratch his neck. As always, it was an impossible feat. “I missed you too.”

“He slept in front of the door,” Barry smiled, sitting down beside him. He brushed a hand down Len’s back, then followed his gaze back to the dog. “I tried to put him on the bed, but he wouldn’t stay with me.”

Len grinned, scruffing up all the extra skin around Flash’s neck and kissing his wet nose. “It’s because I’m his favourite. And because he knows he’s not _ supposed _ to be on the bed.”

Barry just shrugged, completely unapologetic. “If you’re not here, I reserve the right to fill your side of the bed however I like.”

Len raised an eyebrow at him. “That so?”

Barry slumped back into the couch, resting his hand on Flash’s wiggling butt with a smile. “Yeah. Dog, cat, your old jersey. Maybe some of the pots, so I’ll be reminded of your cooking every time I wake up rolling onto one. You have no idea how much I missed it this morning. I tried making eggs the way you do, but they looked more like something of Iris’s.”

They laughed together for a moment, until Flash started enthusiastically licking Len’s face. The wiggling little mess of golden fur nearly careened onto the floor when he tried to climb up on his shoulders, so Len pushed him off. His collar jangled all the way into the laundry room where his toys were.

They watched him go until the hairs at the end of his tail were out of sight, and then kept watching the empty doorway still. Len looked away first, down at his hands. He twisted his ring around his finger until it sat right. When it did, he reached for his boyfriend. Barry didn’t say a word. He curled his fingers into Len’s, loose with fingertips tracing the spaces between Len’s knuckles. He rested his other hand on Len’s shoulder, picking at the seam of the t-shirt he’d borrowed from his dad.

“It was nice,” Len offered, because he was sure Barry was waiting to hear it. “Everyone from their church showed up. You could barely see the coffin with all the flowers.”

Barry only hummed. For the first time, Len really looked at him. His hair was a bit of a mess, probably from the wind howling outside, and he was wearing one of the shirts he usually reserved for sleeping. He hadn’t gone to work, then, like he hadn’t the day before or the day before that or nearly every day since Len had gotten the call that his mother was in the hospital.

Len wanted to pretend he didn’t need it. That though he was touched, it was unnecessary. He knew how to cope with loss and he was well practiced in the art of grieving. But it’d been a long time since Len had pretended anything for Barry, and now would be the worst possible time to start. 

He sighed, leaning his head on the backrest to look at the ceiling. “I’m tired,” he continued when it became clear that Barry wasn’t going to interject. “Lisa and I didn’t go to bed till like one and of course my Dad got up at five, so we had to too. Nothing changes. You know he used to wake us up with him even though school didn’t start until nine because he thought that was teaching us discipline or some shit? Or maybe he just knew I’d go pro and was trying to prepare me.”

Barry laughed. “ _ Athletes _ ,” he joked, smiling because he used to be one. Len snorted, but he stopped smiling when Barry did, watching trepidation cross his face. “Speaking of,” he broached cautiously. “What’s your plan? How much longer can you be off before you’re in trouble?”

Len swallowed. He let go of Barry’s hand, wiping down the rough fabric of his jeans. He leaned forward to fold his hands together between his knees. “I don’t know.” He hesitated, scratching his jaw. “Actually, I was thinking I’d go back to training tomorrow.”

As expected, Barry stilled in surprise. Len could feel him working out what to say and how to tell him he thought that was stupid without giving him cause to get defensive. They’d been working hard on that — communicating something negative without it coming off as an attack — and he could see him holding back from what he really wanted to say.

The hand that was still on his shoulder pulled away, and Barry turned to sit properly on the couch, the leg that was up on the cushions dropping to the floor. He stared at the glass coffee table instead of Len. “That’s… Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

Len glanced at him, worrying his lip between his teeth, then turned his gaze to the ground. Still, his voice was steady when he said, “I do.”

“Why?” Barry shook his head. “No one’s going to think any less of you if you don’t show up to training two days after you bury your mother.”

“I know that,” Len said, with an edge of heat. He reigned it in as soon as he heard it, taking the moment to drop Barry’s hand. He met his eyes. “I’m going. I want to. It’s the  _ only _ thing I want to be doing right now.”

He watched Barry consider for a long minute. Finally, he conceded. “Okay. If that’s what you think is best.” It was clear from his tone that _ he _ didn’t think it was best, but Len didn’t fault him for it. It wasn’t as though Barry knew nothing of mourning. Len wasn’t the only one with parents he wasn’t born to. 

It was different though, wasn’t it? That was what Len had been thinking everytime Barry had been there to comfort him the past few weeks. There was a certain peace that could only be found from knowing the one holding you knew what it was like to be breaking the same way you were, and Len was grateful for it. But there was a certain loneliness, too, from feeling that it wasn’t really the same and not being able to say that because it would hurt the man he loved, the man who had been nothing but  _ there _ , always  _ there _ , whatever he needed.

Barry’s mother died when he was eleven. When the grief was crushing and incomprehensible. Len remembered what that was like, when he was thirteen, sitting on the kitchen floor while his mother’s blood pooled into the cracks between the tiles. He’d felt angry and lost and betrayed, in a loosing fight against the rest of the world. Crushed, but he’d adapted. He’d grown up. He’d let go. He’d let his second mother love him just as fiercely as his first, no matter how vehemently he’d tried to reject it in the early days. That was the grief that came with having someone to blame and being young enough to blame them.

This was different. This grief wasn’t crushing. The anger came in rare, tiny spikes, then washed away. It was just… lonely. Just this piece of him that knew she should be there, and had to keep remembering she wasn’t. There was nothing to blame but her body, the only thing that had betrayed her.

The pain of it came from the guilt. The loneliness of it. 

_ So, what? They’ll die never knowing? _

That was two years ago, before they’d known about their mother’s illness. Lisa had folded her arms across her chest, squaring off against him from across his kitchen counter, while Barry looked between them like he’d discovered an exploded landmine and wasn’t sure whether to clean up the mess or step around it.

Barry’s fingers combing through his hair brought him back to the living room. “I made dinner. I can heat it up for you?”

Len grabbed those gentle fingers and kissed them. “That would be great.”

.

Coach pulled him aside at the end of practice. Clipboard clutched to his chest, one hand scrubbing at his face, it was clear he didn’t want to have to ask.

He did anyway. “Are you sure you’re okay to play?”

Len wiped the sweat from his brow. His jaw ached from being tackled into the endzone, and his legs burned from the strain of two hours of drills after a whole week off. “I’m good,” he insisted. “Nowhere I’d rather be.”

Coach looked at him dubiously, but let him go. Len wasn’t bothered — Barry hadn’t believed him, either. He’d woken with him this morning, as opposed to the usual two hours after Len left, and had spent the time trying to convince him not to go. He had never seen Barry look as worried as he had when Len had picked up the keys and kissed him goodbye.

But he really was fine, and this really was where he wanted to be. Where he  _ needed _ to be. There was nothing that comforted him like being on the field with his team, and there was nothing that took his mind off things like trying to nail a new play. Picking up the ball was like oxygen after a long week of holding his breath.

“Hey, man,” one of the guys called out when he joined the rest of his team in the locker rooms. Someone else slapped his shoulder on their way to the showers.

He removed his gear methodically: gloves, jersey, shoulder pads, knee pads. Each went carefully into his bag, exchanged for plain clothes, but the zipper got stuck halfway up its track. He frowned. He yanked it twice, three times, then bent over to investigate where the teeth had warped.

“Here,” the new transfer whose name Len didn’t know said after he’d been trying to smooth it out with his fingernail for far too long. The guy grabbed the bag from him, contorted the track in some odd way, and then yanked the zipper shut.

Len accepted the bag back. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “Happens to me all the time. Annoying as fuck. Though, when I get my Cougars bag that won’t be an issue for a while, I hope.”

Len glanced over at the locker two down from his, where the Star City Rockets duffel bag sat with half its contents spilled over the bench. They’d given him the jersey his first practice, probably, so he’d feel more like part of the team. Rory, 66. Same as it’d been on his last team.

“Right,” Len said, pulling his jacket on. “Welcome, by the way. Sorry I missed your first couple practices. Rory, is it?”

“Mick.” He shrugged again. “Don’t sweat it. You had more important things. Didn’t think I’d meet you for a while, actually.”

Len paused, frowning, then bent down to tug his shoes on and pick up his bag. He wondered how much the team had said about him, how much they’d talked while he was gone. Worse, he wondered what stories the news had run.

“Yeah, well.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he smiled and clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “See you tomorrow.”

He closed the locker room door on the rest of the team’s goodbyes. His phone lit up in his hand with a text, revealing two missed calls and too many texts for his screen to display. One call from Barry five minutes ago, and one from Lisa a few hours ago.

He sent Barry,  _ Heading home, still in one piece. Practice was good,  _ then tucked his phone back into his pocket without taking it off silent. If he felt guilty for ignoring his sister, it was buried deep enough beneath the dread and exhaustion that it didn’t register. He’d just about made it to his car when Rory, jogging a bit to catch up with him, called out his name.

“You wanna get a drink?” he asked.

Len considered — he could go home, take Flash out for a walk around the neighbourhood, get a head start on dinner and see that warm, touched smile Barry always gave him when he came home to something thoughtful. It would replace that worried look, even if just for a few hours. Or, if the walk with Flash didn’t take too much out of him, maybe Len could even surprise him and take him out for his lunch hour.

But he remembered his first month on the team, fresh out of college and hopeful but unsure if he really had what it took to play professionally. Feeling like an outsider without the guys he’d played with the last four years, surrounded by men who knew what they were doing and, even worse, knew each other. He hadn’t been nervous, but he’d walked into every locker room drumming up a strategy to build relationships here, and he hadn’t really settled in until he’d managed it.

“Yeah,” Len agreed, flipping his keys over in his hands. “Why not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll have to apologize in advance for the speed of updates on this story - I know it's been a fair bit, and I'm anticipating that'll probably be a pattern. I didn't pre-write much of this one before I posted it.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading <3


End file.
